selftermination
by jane hidell
Summary: Terminator inadvertently calls John's bluff, and Kate's life plummets downhill from there. (A bit bleak. I'll go back to happier stuff next.)


This one's a little dark. And still the characters are not mine, just the horrible things I put them through.

**self-termination**

now

            Kate could hardly breathe, she was so nervous.  The knife was safely concealed in her jacket sleeve, but she was sweltering, and she had to be as clear-headed as possible for what she needed to do.

            ("Won't you be too hot?" he asked as she put on the battered jacket.  She normally only wore it at night, when the miserable desert cold replaced the miserable desert heat. 

            "I feel cold….I think I might be getting a touch of flu," she replied, coughing a bit for good measure.

            He paused, then said, "I do not sense any flu-like symptoms. But to be safe perhaps you should lie down inside.")

            It was a miracle she had been able to get the knife from under the mattress before he followed her back to the bedroom.  She almost sliced her wrist shoving it up her sleeve, which would have sucked. He would have noticed the blood, and that would have been the end of that.

            Now she was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, acutely aware as she always was of him sitting there.  He wasn't staring right at her, but any odd movements and he would be on her in a flash.

            She turned her head to look in the full-length mirror next to the bed.  The scar from her last ill-fated attempt was beginning to fade, and she stared wistfully at the line across her throat.  She had been _so close, just hadn't cut deep enough…_

            (After that he had destroyed every eating utensil in the motorhome and then buried the twisted metal far away.  She should have finished the job then, but she was dizzy from blood loss and feared she wouldn't have the strength.  Her last hope remained beneath the mattress.)

            Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the metal resting against her arm.  One shot.  That's all she had. 

            _If this doesn't work, she thought dully, _I'll run into the desert and he'll either have to let me starve or break my neck.__

then

            Kate watched John and the Terminator in disbelief.  _Nuclear war?_  It was a fear that hadn't crossed a lot of minds since the Berlin Wall fell, though it was in reality all too possible still. But today? _Three hours?_  She couldn't process it all. . . the kidnapping, the Terminator, Scott's death, the future. . . Surely this was a just a terrible, terrible dream.

            She was snapped back into the situation at hand by John yelling at the Terminator, demanding that they find her father and stop the war.  But the Terminator was refusing, telling John it was his "destiny" to just let the war happen, and before she knew it John had pulled a handgun out of his jeans; for a crazy second she thought he was going to use it to threaten the Terminator, but in the next even crazier second he aimed it at his own head.

            "Fuck my destiny," he said defiantly.

            "John. . ." she said weakly.  He seemed serious, and she became even more frightened.  _Don't do this, she wanted to say, __don't leave me alone with all this.  But she couldn't move.  She just stood still, saying nothing, breathing shallowly._

            "You cannot self-terminate," Terminator said passively.

            John became enraged. "No, I can do whatever the hell I want! I'm a _human being, not some goddamned robot!"_

            Nonplussed, the robot corrected him. "Cybernetic organism."

            "Whatever!" John barked. "Either we go to her father, get him to shut down Skynet and stop all this shit from happening. . ." he paused, either for dramatic effect or to take a shaky breath, "or so much for the great John Connor."

            For a moment Terminator seemed to be considering what John was saying, but he then said evenly, "Based on your skin temperature and pupil dilation, I calculate an 83% chance that you will not pull that trigger."

            That did it.  The Terminator may not have been able to sense it, but Kate could – John had had it.  If his whole life had been leading up to all the shit she was just learning, she couldn't really blame him.  And before she or even Terminator could do anything, he had made his decision; he squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself.

            "No—" Kate choked just as he pulled the trigger.

            The Terminator caught his falling body but knew at once there was nothing to be done.  Kate's vision began to swim, and she didn't realize she wasn't breathing until she fainted.

now

            _Kate bolted towards John, knocking him to the ground. The gun flew from his hand and he landed with a thud, Kate landing on top of him._

_            "I wasn't really gonna do it, Kate," he laughed, smiling up at her. "I was just bluffing. I would never leave you like that."_

_            She smiled at him in relief._

Kate opened her eyes, expecting to see John in front of her. But instead she saw her own shattered face staring back from the mirror, and she began to cry.  Terminator continued to sit impassively nearby.

            ("Why are you still crying? You did not know him long enough to form such an emotional attachment."

            Kate looked up from where she was sitting by John's grave. "Your psychological subroutines are _for shit_," she snapped at him.  The thing tells her all about her future fighting a war alongside the love of her life, now dead, and he still can't understand why she's always upset.)

            She woke up to an odd variety of dreams these days.  In some of the dreams she and John had prevented the war and were living normal lives, in others they were fighting the war. . . but the one she had the most was the one in which she saved John.  The dream never went beyond her stopping his suicide, but that was all right; whatever would have happened after that, she wouldn't have been alone, and that was enough.  The relief she felt at the end of the dream was so wonderful, and every time she woke up and it vanished, she wanted more desperately to do what . . . _he had been keeping her from._

then

            Kate's head hurt.  She opened her eyes slowly, a little confused.  The world was moving and rumbling and she didn't know where she was.  Sitting up slowly, she suddenly realized she was in the motorhome, which was moving at an incredibly fast clip.  They had no time left to dilly-dally, and Terminator was pushing the RV as fast as it would go to get as far south as it would take them.

            All at once Kate remembered, and she looked around wildly.  But there was no evidence of John or the weapons that Terminator had been filling the motorhome with.  If she hadn't been able to see Terminator driving, she might have thought she'd dreamed it all.

            Hoping maybe she had dreamed the last part, she called John's name.

            "He's in the back," Terminator said.  His voice sounded a little distorted.

            Kate held her breath as she walked to the back of the motorhome, then let it out in a throat-clenching sob when she saw him.  His eyes were closed, thank God, and his head was turned so she couldn't see the gunshot wound.  If not for the blood-soaked pillow his head was resting on, he might have been sleeping.

            She sat gingerly next to him, sobs wracking her body.  What was going to happen now?  She still didn't know why she was even here, and now she was left by herself to figure it out.  Thinking about Terminator calling John the last hope of humankind, and John saying they should have been together since Kripke's basement, Kate felt heartsick.

            If there really was going to be nuclear war, and Terminator was speeding them into the Mexican desert, who knew when she would see a human being again?  She touched John's hand; he was still warm.  She must not have been unconscious for long.

            Weeping quietly, she rested her head on John's still chest and wished with all of her heart and soul that she could join him.

now

            "I'm thirsty," she croaked.

            "I will go with you to get water."

            She sighed. "I don't feel like getting up."

            "Then I will wait until you do."

            Kate had had barely a moment to herself for weeks.  Since the throat-cutting incident, Terminator wouldn't even let her go to the bathroom alone.  He had been acting stranger and stranger, keeping her as if under house arrest.  Even when she _demanded he leave her alone, he would refuse.  Something had gone awry in his programming._

            (Speeding south through the desert, Terminator's mind was wildly running calculations as he listened to Kate cry in the back.  He had failed.  Were he human he may have felt guilt or sadness, but instead he just felt a crippling sense of failure.  He replayed the last seconds of John Connor's life endlessly, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.  Clearly his ability to predict human behavior had lapsed miserably, and now he had failed.  He still had Katherine Brewster to protect, but her future was a cloudy mess now.  No scenario he ran ended with her able to do anything like what she had done in his timeline.  Her success as a leader had hinged on Connor's presence; they were a team.  And now she was alone, with only the vaguest notion of what was going on.  Still, he would get her away from the bombs and protect her until. . .whatever.  There was nothing else for him to do.)

            Kate sighed again.  She really was thirsty, but more importantly she needed him to leave.  Occasionally he would turn his back or let her wander off briefly, but once he realized his guard had been down he would stay at her side for days straight.  He seemed both distracted with his own 'worries' and even more adamant about ensuring her survival.

            ("It makes most sense to let me die," she said softly, a crude bandage around her throat. "You know it, I know it. It's over. I can't be this warrior you say I am. The story's changed, and you don't know how to deal with it."

            "My mission—"—glitch—"is to protect Katherine Brewster."

            "And John Connor. And you failed at that," she snarled. "And obey my commands. And you refuse to do that. So why bother with the rest of your mission? Scrap the whole thing. Let me go, please.")

            But Terminator refused to let her go.  He may have failed half of his mission, but the other half was still within his reach, no matter how little sense any of it made anymore.  His mission was his mission, it was all he had.  And Kate had never mentioned 'going' again.

            But he assumed she was still thinking about it, and as such had been increasingly reluctant to let her out of his sight, even when she told him how embarrassing it was for her to pee with him there.  He reasoned that embarrassment was a 'human thing' that meant nothing to him and so that was that.

            She was never frightened of him, maybe because it was all the same to her if he freaked out and hurt her.  But she really didn't think he would do anything like that—she was all that was left of his mission, and he wasn't going to jeopardize it further.

            Kate put her left hand over her heart, which was racing.  It was an odd gesture that Terminator had seen her do more and more recently, but he could sense no reason to worry about it.

then

            "Can I have a minute alone with him before you . . .?" she asked numbly, looking at the blanket-enshrouded figure.

            Knowing just a little, but enough, about human mourning rituals, he granted her her last moments with John.  Once he had walked far enough away, Kate uncovered John and began furiously rooting around in his pockets, apologizing under her breath.

            "Come on, John. . ." she whispered.  Surely he had some kind of weapon on him.  She already knew she couldn't live through all of this; she didn't want to try.  But Terminator had all of the weapons, and she didn't trust him to give her any.

            Inside one of his jacket pockets she found a large pocketknife and grabbed it, but then stopped – she suddenly really, really wanted to just take the whole jacket.  

Unsure of herself but unwilling to ask _him_ for help, she managed to get John's arms out, but then she needed to somehow lift him up and get the jacket out from under him.  She took a deep breath and pulled him up, hugging him against her with one arm while the other threw the jacket out of the way.  He was getting heavy, and as she lowered him back to the ground she felt that she would be burying her sanity along with him.  They were destined to be together, fine, they would be.  She would follow him . . . But first she would have to stop shaking.

When Terminator returned, she had wrapped her jacket around John and was clutching his against her.  She didn't say anything, and he didn't ask.

            They buried John in a shallow grave a small distance from where Terminator had parked the motorhome.  Kate fashioned a crude cross out of the only two sticks she could find and stuck it carefully in the ground.  (It would later be removed when Terminator found her slashing at her wrists with the wood.)  She then sat next to the grave for hours, staring at it, too exhausted to cry anymore.

            Terminator went about trying to make the motorhome as habitable as he could.  He retrieved the weapons from the roof and hurriedly buried them while Kate was distracted.  He didn't want a repeat performance.

* * * *

            Kate was dozing fitfully on the couch when she heard voices.  Peering out the window, she saw Terminator talking to a carful of people.  She could only hear parts of their conversation, and she slid the window back to hear better.

            ". . . chaos, man," one of the people was saying. "It's chaos or death, everywhere. We have to keep going, we've made it this far. There's nothing left up there, and what is left is being torn apart by . . . who the fuck knows _what's going on, but it's bad and getting worse."_

            "I wish you luck, but we will be fine on our own."

            Someone in the backseat yelled at the driver. "Let's go, dude, he's not coming! We have to keep going!"  The woman in the passenger seat looked completely drained, but she had spotted Kate watching them, and she offered Terminator a box of cupcakes. "Please be well," she said weakly.

            The driver seemed reluctant to leave the first human they had seen in days, but he relented. "See ya, man. Good luck." He floored it, and the cargo-laden sedan roared off in a cloud of dust.

            Kate lay back down, tears filling her eyes.  So it was true.  

            She had believed what Terminator had told her; more importantly she believed that John believed it when he killed himself.  But still a tiny part of her had hoped that somehow it wouldn't happen.

            Kate jumped up and ran out of the trailer, brushing past the cupcake-wielding Terminator, and half-ran/half-stumbled over to John's grave.

            "You _asshole!" she screamed, almost doubled over with rage. "How could you do this to me? How could you leave me alone with this?"  She fell to her knees, her voice breaking.  "You knew what was going to happen. Why didn't you shoot me first?"  Burying her face in her hands, she sobbed, "I can't go through this alone."_

            Terminator watched her meltdown from a distance.  He knew the cause was lost, and there was nothing he could do about it.  He also knew he would have to keep a closer eye on Katherine Brewster . . . her emotions had become far too volatile.

now

            "_Fine_," Kate whined as she stiffly sat up.  Fortunately the sleeves of John's jacket came to just beyond her hands, so she was able to keep the knife hidden.  "Let's go."

            They walked side-by-side to the small pond nearby, and Kate knelt to fill the tumbler she'd brought, glancing at Terminator as he scanned the horizon.  _What the hell do you expect to see?_ she thought bitterly to herself.  

            ("This spot will do," Terminator said as he pulled a short ways off the unpaved road.  Pointing, he continued, "There is a small water source nearby, and the surrounding area is flat. No one will be able to sneak up on us."

            Kate stared dully out the window.  To say she didn't care would be an understatement.  _Who cares? she thought. __Let her come. It doesn't matter now._

As he walked to the back to get John, he said, "When you are ready we will regroup and head out.")

            But she had never been ready, and she never would be.  Nor had the T-X come; Terminator figured that it had been caught when the bombs fell, still looking for them.  It would not have anticipated John's suicide and was probably intrigued when they didn't show up to try to stop it from killing Robert Brewster.  It may have continued to kill its other objectives; it may be hiding in a bunker, waiting to re-emerge as a threat later.

            Not that any of it mattered anymore.

            Kate chugged the water, then took a deep breath, feeling better already.  She handed the tumbler to Terminator to carry, then started to walk back.

            "You know," she began carefully, "I am starting to think about leaving. Staying here isn't doing us any good. But . . . one of the hardest things will be . . . leaving him."  She stared over towards John's grave, praying the Terminator would buy it.  She knew he would be hard to fool, but she had to try.

            Terminator tried to determine if she was telling the truth.  The first part of what she said seemed doubtful, but the last part seemed sincere.  "Did you really care for him?"  
            Smiling in spite of herself, she said, "When we were kids I had the _biggest_ crush on him. I had it bad . . . .  He was, you know, this rebel kid who showed up, so of course he had that going for him . . ." At this point they were next to the grave, and as odd as it felt telling Terminator all of this, it actually felt kind of good.  "And then I actually talked to him, and I could tell that underneath the 'bad boy' crap he had a heart. And he seemed to like me too.

            "But then he disappeared, and my poor little preteen heart was broken. Eventually I made myself forget about him, once it was clear he wasn't coming back. And to have seen him now, after all these years - - it was a little jarring." Her eyes were glazing over with fatigue.  She had to go for it.

            "Do you think I could have some time . . . alone with him?" she asked as pathetically as she could, looking up at Terminator, flooding her eyes with sincerity.

            He was suspicious, but he nodded and began to walk away.

            She watched him for a beat, not believing he was actually going.  Then she got on her knees and put her left hand on John's grave; her right hand clutched the knife, still concealed.

            _Okay John, she thought; she dared not even whisper. _This_ __is it.  If I fail, then…then I don't know what. But I won't fail, I can't.  Tears started to roll down her cheeks__.  I guess we were meant to be together; it might have been nice to have a life with you, even in a nuclear wasteland.  She hurriedly wiped the tears away.  She needed to focus._

            She looked to the side; Terminator was standing next to the motorhome, a good fifty feet away.  He shouldn't be able to reach her in time.

            Kate took one last deep breath, looked down at the grave, and let the knife fall into her hand.

            _See you soon._

            She leaned back for extra momentum, and as she moved forward again thrust the knife into her heart with both hands and all the strength she had.

            Terminator was by her side within seconds, but she had already pulled the knife out and collapsed, blood spilling onto the grave.  A wide pool of it was spreading around her as she looked up at him.  She would have had nothing to say even if there had been time; she simply closed her eyes and died.

            Terminator stared down at the tableau of his failure.

            No longer any reason to exist.

            Without moving, he went about shutting down his systems, cycling through images of the people he failed to protect, "feeling" as bad as a Terminator could.  Soon his power shut off, and he was as effectively dead as the doomed couple before him.


End file.
